Agreement reached on new state budget, negotiators say

Saturday

Illinois House and Senate negotiators said Friday they’ve reached agreement on a fiscal 2009 budget that will see spending increase by more than $2 billion.

Illinois House and Senate negotiators said Friday they’ve reached agreement on a fiscal 2009 budget that will see spending increase by more than $2 billion.

However, both chambers quit work Friday evening before taking up any of the budget bills. That means lawmakers have until midnight tonight to approve the spending plan if they want to avoid another overtime session. After midnight, it will take Republican votes in the Democratically controlled House to pass a budget, further complicating an already complex process.

“There is an agreement,” said Rep. Gary Hannig of Litchfield, the chief budget negotiator for the House Democrats. “Certainly Saturday we need to vote on the budget.”

Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, said the proposed budget is a compromise between a plan initially put out by the Senate and a much more expensive one passed by House Democrats last week. The Senate plan called for a $1.7 billion spending increase, while the House wanted more than $3 billion in new spending.

The compromise will see state spending increase by $2.1 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1, Trotter said. About $515 million will go to public schools, with $148 million of that set aside for the state to pay long-promised money to 24 school districts for construction projects. That would include the Rochester School District, which was promised $10 million in 2002 for help constructing a new junior high school, auditorium and cafeteria.

The state never paid the money, but the school district went ahead with the building project anyway.

Universities and community colleges will get a 2.8 percent across-the-board increase in their budgets.

It could not be determined Friday if that includes about $860,000 to staff the cancer research center at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. The House initially approved money for the center, but later rescinded the vote.

Hannig said the new budget does not include money to cover any pay raises for state workers who are members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union and state are negotiating a new contract to replace the current one that expires June 30.

“We’re not party to that negotiation,” Hannig said of the legislative budget negotiators. “We don’t want to appear to favor one side or the other.”

Any pay raises that are part of the contract would have to be added to the budget later in the year, Hannig said.

The new budget also calls for spending more on programs for senior citizens, the developmentally disabled and other social services.

Trotter acknowledged that the spending plan overshoots expected revenues and will have to be cut by Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“There may be some reductions the governor is going to have to make,” Trotter said. “That’s nothing unusual. We’re hoping this budget is not so out of whack in (Blagojevich’s) mind that he has to veto the whole thing.”

Blagojevich spokeswoman Rebecca Rausch said the governor “finds it hard to believe lawmakers will send him an unbalanced budget.”

Just how far out of balance the budget is remains to be seen.

Senate Democrats approved issuing pension bonds and sweeping restricted state funds to cover about $1 billion of the new spending. But neither proposal has passed the House, and Hannig was noncommittal about whether he thought they will be taken up there.

Senate Republicans also said the Democrats are assuming the state will collect $1 billion more in tax revenue next year, something they said is highly unlikely given the economic slowdown.

House Republicans continue to complain that they’ve been left out of the budget-negotiating process. House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said he thinks the budget is “several billion dollars out of whack.”

Blagojevich, meanwhile, continued to press lawmakers to approve a $31 billion public works construction bill before leaving Springfield. House committees Friday morning approved a massive expansion of gaming and leasing the Illinois lottery, two key components of paying for the capital bill. However, neither came to a vote in the full House.

Blagojevich was meeting with legislative leaders late Friday trying to work out an agreement.

Doug Finke can be reached at (217) 788-1527.

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